


Textbook Theories

by alphvjensen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 19:52:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12306519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphvjensen/pseuds/alphvjensen
Summary: There's a theory out there that states everyone has a number printed somewhere on their body and the number is the number of days that it takes a person to meet their soulmate. Dean has a number printed on the inside of his wrist and Sam, well Sam doesn't have one at all.





	Textbook Theories

There were days when Sam would crawl into Dean’s lap, his little legs straddling Dean’s waist as he held Dean’s wrist in his own hands and traced the numbers that were imprinted on Dean’s wrist with chubby little fingers for hours. He would sit there, just like that, not moving, not saying anything, just continuously tracing the dark marks as if he was trying to memorize the shape of them with his fingerprints. 

The black little one thousand, five hundred and fifty-nine.

Dean would run his fingers through Sam’s hair, brushing out the knots that got tangled around his own fingers. He would hold Sam for however long Sam sat there in his lap. And while Sam was looking at his wrist with the numbers, Dean would be looking at Sam’s wrist, bare and pale, wondering why his little brother didn’t have any numbers on his wrist.

Sam would ask. He would stare up at Dean after a while with those big hazel eyes of his and he would ask Dean why his wrist were bare, why he didn’t have a number, why he was so different from Dean and Dean could only shrug his shoulders and say “I don’t know, Sammy. That’s just the way it is.”

Sam never liked that answer, the question that was always left a question because he knew that there had to be a reason why Dean was numbered and why Sam was not. There were kids at school who would also have numbers on their wrists and when Sam would ask them why they had numbers, they would also shrug, say that they were born with it.

When Sam would ask his teachers, they would only smile that sugar sweet fake smile and say that “oh it’s nothing that you need to concern yourself with, dear. At least, not yet” and then proceed to give Sam a juice box like that was the thing that Sam had originally asked about.

One night, when Sam was curled up underneath the covers, sound asleep, Dean sat across from his father and asked him about the numbers because his father would know what they meant. He always had the answer to everything but something passed over his father’s eyes when Dean asked and absentmindedly he rubbed at the inner part of his own wrist before he shook his head and told Dean that he had no idea what the numbers meant. Some people were just born with them and that was that.

Whether or not Dean knew that his father was lying, he didn’t say anything. Instead he slid off the chair he was sitting on, changed into his pajamas and climbed into the bed that he was sharing with his brother. Even in his sleep, Sam reached out for Dean, his small hands curling into fists in the front of Dean’s shirt.

The curiosity of the number that lined Dean’s wrist didn’t wear off for either one of them. The want to know what it meant was still there, lingering in the back of their mind but eventually they had to grow up and stop wondering about trivial things like that.

So Sam stopped tracing the numbers and Dean stopped running his fingers through Sam’s hair looking at his bare wrist. They both stopped asking what it meant and slowly the numbers that used to be so important to the both of them, a mystery that was just for them to figure out, started to fade away until it was barely just there.

It was almost like the fact that Sam had stopped questioning about it, had stopped tracing the numbers, touching Dean, that they were fading away until they no longer existed to be.

Sometimes, at night, that worried Dean because those numbers were a part of him, they had been on his arm for as long as he remembered and even though he had no idea what they meant, he wanted them to be there. Sometimes, when everyone else is asleep and Dean is the only one awake because his mind is too wild to settle down, he thinks that he could still feel the ghost of Sam’s fingers tracing over the lines. And almost everytime that happens, it always feels right, like there is a piece of Dean that has settled back into place.

It was Sam, as it naturally would be, that figured out one day what exactly those numbers on Dean’s wrist meant and the realization of the reason why Sam didn’t have any sent his stomach dropping to his toes because it meant things that it shouldn’t mean.

It meant that the universe had screwed up royally and that everything that had happened was only a result of that mistake.

He was required to do a research project for his Psychology class. It was the kind of project that he had no say in what he had to research and it was worth over half his grade for the semester, not that he was going to be staying that long at the school anyway. Not with the way that Dad was talking. His teacher passed around a hat that had little slips of paper folded up inside and each student was required to research whatever was on that slip of paper. Most of the things were different theories about the human physique. Some were less conventional theories that couldn’t be disproved but they weren’t widely accepted by the public now.

That was how Sam got stuck in the library, nose deep on books that hadn’t been opened in years, pages yellowing from age, reading all about soulmates and the unlikely theory thereof.

Everyone had numbers printed somewhere on their bodies. Most commonly it was the wrist or the inner part of the ankle. Sometimes it was along the hip or on the collarbone or right behind the ear but regardless of where it was, every person had a number. 

Except, of course, Samuel Winchester.

The theory goes is that the number that is imprinted on the person’s skin is the number of days that it takes for them to meet their soulmate. Most people dismiss the theory because that’s how far the theory goes. It just says that it’s the number of days that it takes for you to meet your soulmate whether that be sitting next to them on the bus and having a short, friendly conversation or bumping into them in the middle of a lunch rush at the local cafe.

It wasn’t the romanized version of meeting your soulmate that Hollywood tried to make people believe. According to the theory, most people didn’t know that they even ran into their soulmate and eventually, the numbers just faded away, the barest trace of a memory that should have happened but never did.

Dean had the number one thousand, five hundred and fifty-nine on his wrist. It didn’t take much math to figure out that it was a little over four years that it took for Dean to meet his supposed soulmate.

Dean was born on January 24, 1979 and if you added that one thousand, five hundred and fifty nine, it equaled the one date that Sam didn’t want it to equal. His own birthday, May 2, 1983.

Which meant that he and Dean… they were…

He slammed the book that he was reading shut, shoved all his notes in his backpack and tried to ignore the way that his heart was pounding through his chest. Sam wished that he could say that he was surprised or shocked or anything else but it made sense. It all made sense in Sam’s young mind. The reason why Dean had a number on his wrist, why Sam didn’t, why they both seemed closer than normal brothers.

Dean was sprawled out on the bed, watching some football game on TV when Sam walked through the door, throwing his bag down on the ground and marched straight to the bathroom without saying anything to Dean. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say anyway. I mean, how were you supposed to casually say that “we’re soulmates, Dean. The universe and the stars and that number on your wrist made it so.” He couldn’t.

So instead he took a shower, one hot enough to burn the skin on his body, strip away all the knowledge that he just learned. Maybe the steam from the shower could clear his mind, make him forget everything. Go back to that ignorant bliss that he lived in before the project.

Dean wanted to ask Sam what was on his mind but it only took one look at his younger brother to know that Sam wasn’t going to want to talk about whatever it was. With a sigh and a small frown, Dean shut off the lights, striped out of his clothes, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and climbed underneath the blankets. Sam was only sleeping inches away but for the first time in years, that distance felt like miles.

It would be so easy to reach out and run his fingers through Sam’s hair like he did when Sam was so much younger, brush the knots out and feel the way that Sam would relax underneath his fingers. Except he couldn’t. The knobs of Sam’s spine poked through the thin t-shirt that he was wearing as he curled in on himself, trying to make himself seem as small as possible.

So, against what everything Dean was thinking, the fact that he could almost feel the pain in his chest that Sam was feeling, he kept his hands to himself. That night he fell asleep with his thumb slowly running back and forth along the faded numbers on his wrist.

In the morning, things didn’t seem to get better. There were dark circles under Sam’s eyes like he hadn’t slept that night at all and when Dean reached out to touch him, Sam flinched away like the touch burned him.

It went on days like this, Sam avoiding Dean like Dean was contagious with something that he didn’t want to catch. He stayed at school longer than what he needed to. He clung to the side of the bed when he slept, if he slept at all. The dark circles under his eyes only grew darker the longer they avoided each other.

The book that Sam had checked out from the library burned a hole through his backpack, the truth behind the numbers on Dean’s wrist and the lack thereof on his own wrist. The project that was due at the end of the semester sat unfinished and Sam wasn’t sure if he was ever going to finish it. He couldn’t finish it. He couldn’t sit in the same room as his brother knowing that they were always meant to be something more.

It had been seventeen days since that night that Sam came back to the motel with that book shoved deep in his backpack. Seventeen days since Sam stopped talking to Dean, stopped sleeping at night, learned the truth behind everything.

He lived with the secret for seventeen days and it was all just boiling over to the point where he couldn’t keep it inside any longer.

Dean had grown used to Sam staying out late, him coming into the motel room well after dark only to shrug off his backpack, hop in the shower for a long while and then slipped off into bed without saying more than five words to Dean.

Except, it was different that night. Sam stumbled through the motel door and almost immediately Dean could smell the alcohol clinging to Sam’s body like a second skin. His eyes were unfocused and he couldn’t stay upright. Dean watched Sam out of the corner of his eye, weighing the words on his tongue that he wanted to say but he wasn’t sure how Sam was going to react. He never was sure anymore. Sam was nothing more than a bomb waiting to go off and Dean was the fuse.

He expected Sam to stumble to the shower, ignore Dean as per usual, sleep off the alcohol that was racing through his body and wake up with a massive hangover. In the morning, Dean would ask him why he spent the whole night drinking, whether it was with friends or if he was making use of that fake ID that Dean had made him and get that same snappy response that he got nowadays.

But Sam didn’t walk towards the shower. Instead, he shed out of his jacket, toed out of his shoes and slinked over to where Dean was sprawled out on the bed.

Sam crawled onto Dean’s lap like he hadn’t done in years.

Straddled Dean’s waist like he hadn’t done in years.

Grabbed Dean’s wrist and traced the numbers like he hadn’t done in years.

And Dean just sat there, staring at his little brother as Sam touched Dean like he hadn’t done in forever and he was almost too scared to breathe for fear that Sam would suddenly pull away and distance himself even more.

They didn’t speak for a long while, Sam just tracing over the numbers, watching as they seemed to darken under the touch.

Then Sam finally met his brother’s eyes and he leaned even closer to the point that Dean could nearly taste the whiskey on Sam’s breath. Sam was drunk, Dean could tell but Sam seemed more aware than he had in weeks.

Finally, Sam spoke and the numbers on Dean’s wrist seemed to burn.

“Do you believe in soulmates, Dean?” Sam whispered, his lips moving against Dean’s.

**Author's Note:**

> I love a good soulmate au and this one is the first one that I've written ever so thoughts, comments and opinions are always welcomed.


End file.
